“Dell Inc. said Thursday that earnings fell slightly in preliminary first-quarter results, and the computer maker planned to lay off more than 8,000 employees over the next year as part of an ongoing restructuring,” Matt Slagle reports for The Associated Press.
“Dell said it earned $759 million, or 34 cents per share, in the three months ended May 4. That compared with $762 million, or 33 cents per share, in the year-ago period,” Slagle reports.
“First-quarter sales rose nearly 1 percent from the year ago period to $14.6 billion,” Slagle reports. “Analysts, on average, expected earnings of 26 cents per share on sales $13.95 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.”
Slagle reports, “Round Rock-based Dell’s earnings statements from the second, third and fourth quarters also remain preliminary and have yet to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission because of an ongoing federal accounting probe that found numerous errors, evidence of misconduct and financial control deficiencies.”
“Thursday’s report included a charge of $46 million, or 2 cents per share, for costs related to the investigation,” Slagle reports. “Dell also hasn’t filed its annual report for the fiscal year ended Feb. 2.”
Slagle reports, “The layoffs, which represent 10 percent [MDN Note: Actually, it’s 9%.] of Dell’s global work force of 88,100 full time and part-time employees, come as Dell struggles to regain market share after Hewlett-Packard Co. ousted it from the top spot in worldwide computer shipments last year.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mikey really ought to get to work figuring out how he’s going to sell the company and give the money back to the shareholders.
Rather than gloat, let’s show some sympathy to 8000 people who just lost their livelihood with bills to pay and mouths to feed. I wish them luck in finding new employment.
Regardless of my Mac preferences, it really is sad and a shame to see 8,000 people laid off and out of work. Quite sad and scary for many of them I am sure. I do wish them the best.
Another fine take from MDN. For a more realistic analysis read:
HERE
More to come-
88K people is a lot of folks to have for a ‘supposedly’ efficient mass producer like Dell. Volume of units shipped doesn’t justify the number of people on the payroll.
Especially since most of their products are outsourced to OEM manufacturers.
This is just the first wave of layoffs for Dell as they trim their product lines & headcount in order to reduce costs.
Face it …
DELL
SELLS
CRAP
Hope they get a great severance. Too bad they can’t bring back all those call centers they shipped of to India to save a buck.
“Rather than gloat, let’s show some sympathy to 8000 people who just lost their livelihood with bills to pay and mouths to feed.”
Fsck them.
That’s what happens when you do deals with the devil.
I think I prefer gloating. Life is tough all around, and their CEO is an arrogant prick. I have family in that part of Austin and when Dell was ridin’ high there was plenty of smugness within the Dell culture. They even came up with a name for employees who had become millionaires with Dell stock options. They were called “Dellionaires”. Aww, isn’t that cute? And they looked down their noses at Macs, and people that used Macs only did so “because they just weren’t computer savvy”. So now I laugh at the demise of this crap company that represents so much of what is wrong with the tech industry. They’re finally seeing that their delusions of grandeur were not warranted.
Wo,. To much,
MD:?
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/steve-jobs-and-bill-gates-together-part-1-of-7/
All in all, its an unfortunate turn of events for Dell employees. I’ve been a fervent Mac user from the very beginning, through thick and thin. Fortunately for me and those like me, Apple had the visonary genius of Steve Jobs to keep the company viable and, frankly, resurrect it. I’m sure there are numerous Dellionaires who will be unaffected by these layoffs. Its not them whom I’m concerned about; I’m concered for the 8000 honest work-a-day men and women who do not have huge stock options to fall back on.
Don’t get me wrong — I truly think Mr. Dell and his products suck donkey dick. But empathy is a very human trait, and I do feel for the average Joe who was lured in and, ultimately, fscked by that asshole.
Beleaguered Dell = Delleaguered
People will have different “realistic” takes on these numbers but the bottom line is that 8k employees and their families will have immediate problems in the next few months, financially and emotionally.
It’s not like the US economy is rapidly growing at this time, and these laid off employees will have available jobs right away. To them, this is the only reality that matters.
Many of these people lost their jobs because Dell decided to take jobs away from Americans and outsource all their technical support to India instead. Screw Dell!!
We would win over more Mac converts by demonstrating empathy for those losing their Dell jobs than by saying “fsck them.” (Besides, it’s the right thing to do.) That does NOT mean we can’t also have a chuckle at Michael Dell’s expense, though, big A$$HOLE that he is.
BTW, these job cuts have nothing to do with outsourced call centers–which may, in fact, have saved other jobs at Dell by permitting it to be more competitive on price. Unfortunately, many consumers are clearly willing to trade crappy service for a cheaper up-front price–and that’s their choice, though it isn’t mine.
Can we all try and be a little less hard-hearted about this story.
Whilst it’s impossible to make an omelette without breaking eggs and redundancies were and continue to be the blunt weapon of choice when getting a company back in shape, it ill behoves us to dance on the career graves of the first 8000 people to be fscked over in Dell’s quest to cut more costs (?!?) from its profit and loss chart.
Hopefully, the majority of redundancies will be focussed in economies which are a little more buoyant than that of the US as a whole at this moment, thus affording the unfortunates who get canned a realistic chance of being re-employed somewhere else.
But, at the end of the day, let’s ask one practical question: how many times does this strategy succeed when the company in question has a) no differentiating products, b) unique selling proposition and c) no substantive “relationship” with its customers.
I can remember companies who had one or two of those qualities and they still died (Data General) or are coughing up blood at this time (Silicon Graphics anyone?). So when you have none of the above, plus lousy build quality, zero R&D and an unprincipled “bait & switch” approach to sales, how do you think this story is going to end?
Goodbye Michael Dell!!
You were an steathly and almost non-existent leader.
Your words and deeds will dissipate like the smoke you
tried to sell.
Apple is always looking for high-income individuals to boost
it’s stock price. Buy a block of 30,000 and insure your retirement.
Just a poor Mr. Dell thought.
DUDE! YOUR GOING BANKRUPT!
Guess it wasn’t so stupid of HP to buy Compaq after all huh?
With IBM leaving the personal computer market, Dell’s bait and switch tactics, shoddy customer service and overpriced professional level hardware, it was again time for a new leader in the PC box assemblers market.
IBM came and went.
Gateway came and went.
Dell is going out.
HP is up and coming.
Apple is just happy to gain a market share point or two, diversify into other profitable hardware products.
Look whose the one who just took one more step to shutting down and giving the money back to stockholders.
While I have empathy for those unemployed Dell workers….its time this stupid company slowly goes down…since if they got any cheaper; a loaf of bread would become more expensive than a Dell computer.
What did you say to Apple 10 years ago Michael? Look who’s in that spot now….dumbass. The world is coming to realize what a crappy computer maker Dell really is…so this positive ever increasing consumer knoledge will only act as a catalyst to destroy Dell once and for all….and I would celebrate on that day.
“All in all, its an unfortunate turn of events for Dell employees. I’ve been a fervent Mac user from the very beginning, through thick and thin. Fortunately for me and those like me, Apple had the visonary genius of Steve Jobs to keep the company viable and, frankly, resurrect it. I’m sure there are numerous Dellionaires who will be unaffected by these layoffs. Its not them whom I’m concerned about; I’m concered for the 8000 honest work-a-day men and women who do not have huge stock options to fall back on.
Don’t get me wrong — I truly think Mr. Dell and his products suck donkey dick. But empathy is a very human trait, and I do feel for the average Joe who was lured in and, ultimately, fscked by that asshole.”
Yeah, it is ALWAYS that way. Were these decisions really about the company? Usually it is about the FAT F’in top end keeping their wallets thick. More of the middle class gone because the bosses screwed up!
“Regardless of my Mac preferences, it really is sad and a shame to see 8,000 people laid off and out of work. Quite sad and scary for many of them I am sure.”
Maybe there’s a company in Cupertino that can absorb some of them.
I agree with Lee. One takes the jobs one can get. However, Dell does make and sell crap.
I do hate those snotty, smug Dell owners who tell me that their cheap, crummy Windows-running Dell boxes are as good as my Mac.
Only 80,000 to go now!
YEP!
Dell is begining that slow circle clockwise (or counterclockwise depending where you live) around the bowl.
Flush please.
i like dell servers. they’ve done pretty well by me. I’ve been using them since around 2000. I have 18 poweredge servers, 2 powervault arrays and have retired 7 servers and one array (from age). I also have 4 xserves and 2 xraids which work nicely, too. G5 xserves. i hope to get some intel-based ones before long.
actually, i’m looking at building an xsan to share with several dell servers running VMware ESX. i currently have an xraid hooked directly into a dell server (via an Apple fiber channel card) and the ESX 3.0.1 is accessing it nicely — step 1 successful in the xsan testing.
one thing that i REALLY want is for Apple to work with VMware and get their xsan certified to work with ESX. you’ll see a TON of xraids and their corresponding metadata controlling xserves sold.
now, the consumer desktops and laptops may very well be junk but i don’t deal with them.
It’s like watching what happened to Gateway all over again. I feel sorry for those 8000 workers now facing dole queues, but not for Dell the organisation. They sold their customers shoddy rubbish, thought they could get away with it, and turned the support arm into a bottom of the barrel operation into the bargain.
Those other 80,000 employees would be well advised to start looking elsewhere now.
MICHAEL DELL IS A COMPLETE ASSHAT
Apple was once beleagured, as MDN puts it, and circling the toilet bowl as another so eloquently states. Back then, Dell was riding high. Dell isn’t going anywhere and Apple fans shouldn’t be so quick to gloat. It could happen again.
The market has responded favorably to Dell’s earning report, pushing DELL up by 4.68% this morning, compared to yesterday’s close.
In addition, A.G. Edwards (an analyst) raised its rating on DELL from “Hold” to “Buy”. Other analyst upgrades are likely to follow.
More broadly, the news from Dell is helping to give the entire S&P 500 a boost, along with positive unemployment figures and mild inflation data. S&P index futures are currently 5.5 above fair value, indicating a strong opening for the market at 09:30 ET today.
So this news from Dell is actually viewed as quite encouraging by the market.
Posters here who would stop the layoffs if they could wouldn’t go so far as to dumping their Macs for Dells to help support the workers.
Talk is cheap. Your buying Macs contributed to the layoffs, so your sympathies, like Dell’s, extend only as deep as your wallets.
Apple This…
Wow, you’re a genius.
People buying Macintosh systems didn’t cause the problem at Dell, it was people not buying their choice of commodotized grey box from Dell and going to HP, Gateway or down the self-build route.
I personally feel sympathy, simply because unemployment is not very nice rather than some concept of guilt caused by me having the good taste to buy a Macintosh.
MCCFR, a Mac purchased is a Dell unpurchased. Again, you can feel all the sympathy you wish, but it’s empty if you don’t buy an ugly, useless, beleaguered Dell virus magnet to help end the layoffs of the people who flog them.
Dump your Mac and buy a Dell.
Like that would ever happen. So turn off the crocodile tears.
Dell has destroyed its reputation for “best of breed” as far as service and components goes. It has pushed Windows when people are fed up with Windows. It has outsourced call centers to foreign countries. And finally, it fires people that it can’t outsource.
Moral of the story? Dell sucks.
“a Mac purchased is a Dell unpurchased”
yeah, cause those are your only two options…….
logic and reason need to make a come back in this world.
Believe it or not, I work in Dell Management, though I’m a huge Apple fan (Apple doesn’t pay enough for my position). This is not good news for my division, or for the company.
Does Dell make crap? Yes, for the most part. But they didn’t use to. Back in the day they made high quality stuff. I assure you most of the people I know in Dell KNOW that Dell is selling crap, KNOW that Michael is not doing jack squat to fix anything and KNOW we’re in trouble. We saw it coming a long time ago.
I know some of you guys are such rabid fanboys that it’s impossible for you to grasp that this is dealing with people’s lives, and that these lives are more important than your idiot fanboyism.You should really consider how people like me are sitting here wondering when they’re going to name the targets for all these layoffs.
Remember, having healthy competition is a good thing. Apple needs a company like Dell, whether you believe it or not.
As of 11:03 ET, both DELL and the broader market have come back in since the opening highs.
DELL is currently trading at $27.698, or 2.86% higher than yesterday’s close.
DELL volume is heavy, already over 32 million shares, compared to a daily average of ~20 million.
On the whole, the market continues to respond positively to DELL’s quarterly earnings and other announcements.
Ouch “Remember, having healthy competition is a good thing. Apple needs a company like Dell, whether you believe it or not.”
I disagree. Apple needs HP as a competitor. It needs Microsoft as a competitor. It even needs Creative as a competitor. It doesn’t need Dell, since Dell doesn’t bring anything new to the table for Apple to react to.
Best of luck in the cull, but if I were you my CV would already be out there. Dell have lost it big time and going on previous corporate cycles there’s a lot more bad news to come before they turn it round.
Remember, having healthy competition is a good thing. Apple needs a company like Dell, whether you believe it or not.
Guess what? I don’t. Who cares for the umpteenth PC assembler?
The reality of the situation is not that 8000 people lost their jobs; 8000 Americans and Europeans lost their jobs. Somewhere in Asia there are 8000 people who are very happy because they just got job offer from a large well know American company called Dell.
Just my $0.02
Personally I have little sympathy for people who work for dishonorable companies, ‘just doing my job’ is not good enough. Too many times I have been messed around with by, for example, call center staff who know their jobs are to frustrate you until you go away. They could get another job, maybe paying a little less, and be more honorable in the job that they do. Sure it can be tough, most of us have had it tough at one time or another. I blame every person that works for Microsoft and sells Microsoft products for being part of the plague that infests this planet.
I do acknowledge however that the bulk of the responsibility for shoddy products is borne by the people who have the power to change things, those in management and on the BODs and the bankers.
Apple was going down the tubes only when Steve Jobs wasn’t there, and it deserved to be because of how they were treating their customers. There is no comparison between Apple with Steve and Apple without Steve, especially since his return by which time he had wised up somewhat.
And Dell’s stock going up, well that’s The Street for you, the merchants (cockney rhyming slang!), they like the fact that there are fewer employees to take a cut, more for them.
So you are in effect saying to buy Dell and put Apple employees out of work. My, how one-sided your concerns are.
I don’t recall seeing any concern over the jobs of Apple employees during its dark days years ago. In fact Michael Dell rather brazenly stating that Apple should sell the company and give the money back to its sharholders. Talk about kicking somebody when they’re down!
What bothers me mostly is that Michael Dell led the charge of building cheap commodity computers by outsourcing them to “low cost regions” such as China. As that happened, several manufacturing facilities in the United States were closed down and (Dell) people lost their jobs. I distinctly recall Dell users smugly blurting out how expensive Apple computers are – especially years ago when Apple still had its manufacturing facilities in the United States. To combat this, Apple had to farm computer manufacturing off shore as well and close down its manufacturing facilities and, just like Dell, lay off a bunch of people.
I don’t believe there are any personal computers manufactured in the United States any more thanks in large part to people wanting ‘cheap’ computers and following their hero Michael Dell.
It’s not only Dell, it’s Ford, Chrysler, GM and lord know how many more. If this trend continues, you think this will not affect everybody’s economy?
Gandalf,
No corporation exists on pure honor, the mission of a corporation is first and foremost to turn a profit.
How do you think I felt about Apple when I bought a B&W G3 that was purposely rendered processor un-upgradable by means of a deceiving firmware updated, only to force people to buy the new G4 boxes that included the velocity engine. Apple actually felt it would lose sales if it didn’t render that box un-upgradable. Did they do it to benefit their customers? You think that was honorable? It took two years for third parties to be able to undo that firmware update. So don’t be so quick to judge. Or if so doing it, hold Apple to the same standard.
The Dell employee wrote:
“Believe it or not, I work in Dell Management, though I’m a huge Apple fan (Apple doesn’t pay enough for my position). This is not good news for my division, or for the company.
Does Dell make crap? Yes, for the most part. But they didn’t use to. Back in the day they made high quality stuff. I assure you most of the people I know in Dell KNOW that Dell is selling crap, KNOW that Michael is not doing jack squat to fix anything and KNOW we’re in trouble. We saw it coming a long time ago.
I know some of you guys are such rabid fanboys that it’s impossible for you to grasp that this is dealing with people’s lives, and that these lives are more important than your idiot fanboyism.You should really consider how people like me are sitting here wondering when they’re going to name the targets for all these layoffs.
Remember, having healthy competition is a good thing. Apple needs a company like Dell, whether you believe it or not.”
—————————
1) You stated the obvious when you said that, “This is not good news for my division, or for the company.” Yeah, we know that. That’s why some of us are very, very happy.
2) Secondly, Dell has always made crap. ALWAYS! My non-immediate family have all been Dell users for a long time, and I’ve always been astonished at the crap quality of Dell products.
3) Thirdly, Dell is NOT healthy competition. They do not and have never brought good ideas to market. They are not an innovator. They are a margin-slicing commodity box assembler and they simply cannot be compared to the kind of company that is Apple. If you don’t get this, then I hope you’re one of those being laid off, because you deserve it. Apple does not need Dell in any way shape or form. Besides, there are plenty of other crap PC box assemblers out there – if that’s what Apple really needs.
All of you bleeding hearts just don’t get how smug the Dell culture used to be. I’ve seen it firsthand. They practically took over that part of Austin (Round Rock) and became “the town store” – so to speak. They were pretty high on their own fumes at a time when all they had done was to ride the PC wave. All they ever were was in the right place at the right time, never realizing that their company was just a lowest common denominator type of outfit, with no redeeming value (product innovation) to speak of.
Some years ago I knew this elderly couple that was getting into computers for the first time. Since Dell commercials were plastered all over the airwaves, they thought that meant something, so they called a Dell sales line and spoke to a woman who influenced them into making a wrong decision. Music was their hobby, and they told the Dell bitch that they wanted to run music programs as well as surf the internet. They knew I used a Mac, and they told the lady they were thinking about getting one.
She lied to them and told them that Macs were way behind PC’s, and that……[drum roll, please]……”Macs are not any good at running music software.”(!!!) She also told them that you couldn’t surf the internet on Macs!!! I was out of town for a few weeks at the time, so they weren’t able to confirm any of this with me and they were eager to get started. And since she sounded so confident in her lies, they believed her and bought a Dell. They were in PC/Dell computer hell for some time after that.
Their computer hell ended when they finally got a Mac. Period. End of story.
So my heart bleeds NOT for Dell of anyone associated with that rotten company.
Apple is doing well, and Dell is not. Fantastic!
And by the way, whenever someone starts trotting out the old, tired, clichéd, time-worn and fallacious, yet strangely ad hominen “Apple fanboys” name calling crapola, they are in essence admitting (whether they know it or not) that they basically HAVE NO ARGUMENT TO SUPPORT THEIR CASE. Calling someone an “Apple fanboy” or a “Mac fanboy” is just shorthand for saying, “I’m an idiot”. It’s as if they think it is some sort of nuclear bomb of “arguments” – laying waste to everything in their path. But they’ll continue to do it because they have nothing else.
OOps,
What would you expect. If I call a Chevy dealership asking about Nissan reliability and quality, what kind of response am I going to get?! Are your really that naive. Did you expect for one minute that any Dell representative would actually acknowledge that a Mac is better then a their hardware? Maybe this couple should have called Apple first and asked about Apple products. You don’t call Dell’s sales line to learn about Apple or HP or any other none Dell product. If the story you tell is truth, they got what they deserved.
I’m astonished to think that people at Dell don’t see this coming. Actually, if what the one poster said is true, they do see it coming. Yet they stay there hoping that it won’t be them on the chopping block?
Dudes, get out, then again, don’t. It is better if they give you the layoff compensation package instead of you giving them the resignation letter.
Summary: Stay at Dell and wait for your layoff package, then go find a new job, but aim for a better company that isn’t going to outsorce your job the minute their profit margins are sliced.
I’m babling, I know…
Heading into the close, DELL is trading at $27.41, down a bit from its high of $28.04, but still up 1.85% from its close ysterday.
DELL share volume has been heavy, at over 51 million shares traded, more than 2.5x the average daily volume.
In case you’re interested, AAPL is at $118.84, down 1.94% from its close yesterday.
Apple needs Dell like the Titanic needed that iceberg.
Apple will do just fine competing against HP, Lenovo, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony and Acer.
Dell was selling crap back in 2000 when I bought the first and the last laptop from them. They really screwed me over with that laptop.
Payback’s a bitch.
I see Americans being laid off and I just give my head a shake.
Here in Alberta Canada we are so short of workers that we are flying them in, two months on, one month off, from The Philippines and China, to work in the Tar Sands projects. Free flights, free room and board, home cooking and about 40% of the Union wage scale. We only kill 4 or 5 a year in industrial accidents. A lot safer here than in China or The Philippines.
Everybody wins.
Oops:
I see you have the I.Q. of a 5 year old. If you are not eloquent enough to be able to express your self without resorting to fouled language, you probably don’t have the education level to have an intelligent opinion. How brave you are to threaten me behind the security of your screen name and the confront of anonymity. I bet if I saw you walking down the street you probably would not be threatening me the way you are. You are pathetic, and probably do not really pose a threat to me or anybody. You are probably a very small puny little person with a big online attitude.
Rather than gloat, let’s show some sympathy to 8000 people who just lost their livelihood with bills to pay and mouths to feed.
There’s always Wal-Mart, yet another bottom-feeding cost-squeezer that treats their people like shit.
Mac Nugget wrote:
“I see you have the I.Q. of a 5 year old. If you are not eloquent enough to be able to express your self without resorting to fouled language, you probably don’t have the education level to have an intelligent opinion. How brave you are to threaten me behind the security of your screen name and the confront of anonymity. I bet if I saw you walking down the street you probably would not be threatening me the way you are. You are pathetic, and probably do not really pose a threat to me or anybody. You are probably a very small puny little person with a big online attitude.”
______________________
Mac Nugget:
Pretty much everything you just said is an online cliché.
To quote you again, “I see you have the I.Q. of a 5 year old…blah blah blah…How brave you are to threaten me behind the security of your screen name and the confront of anonymity…blah blah blah.”
Seriously, it’s all straight out of the internet dweller’s playbook.
If you were educated at all, you would know that a great many intelligent people actually DO curse from time to time. Especially when they are looking at the face of irretrievable stupidity. There is not one thing “uneducated” about cursing. You’re just a limp-wristed wimp that faints at the utterance of a “bad word”.
Your assertion that I have the I.Q. of a five year old is especially funny in light of the fact that in the following sentence you referred to my use of “fouled” language. Hahahaha! It’s not “fouled” language. It’s “foul” language. Moron! And pray tell, what exactly is “the confront of anonymity”?
And I should point out that YOU, sir, are the one that first got in my face. YOU, sir, are the one that played the tough guy with your insult – presuming to assert that I was naive, and clearly betraying your ignorance of that very word. As I said, it is one thing to know something exists (in this case, bald face lying for the sake of a sell). It is an entirely different matter to consider it acceptable.
And were you not playing the tough guy when you arrogantly said that the elderly couple got what they deserved? I wonder, would you like to tell me that to my face, oh brave one? Who’s hiding behind internet anonymity now? Huh?
So I put it all back in your face and now you’re embarrassed because I revealed your ignorance and your moral ambiguity. In your mind, it was my job to sit there with hat in hand as you lectured me on the needs of lying in this society. It tells me that you yourself are a liar, and like all liars, you are a coward. What a sorry excuse for a human being.
So you are in effect saying to buy Dell and put Apple employees out of work. My, how one-sided your concerns are.
Were you born that thick or did it come on by degrees?
If you insist on telling half-truths, it’s up to others to finish the rest of it.
That happy-worker paradise is a crock. Fort McMurray is a hell hole where people earning $1,000 to $2,000 a week have to live in shelters because housing costs and rents are higher than in Manhattan.
That’s why Big Oil has to import workers. And when they do, they pay them Wal-Mart slave wages and treat them the same way.
Alberta isn’t called Mississippi 1956 for nothing.
So it seems Michael Dell’s big plan to turn things around is too lay off a bunch of people and start selling at Wal-mart. Well that will help things – for a little while.
How can you judge my personal integrity? You are the one with the personal attacks. Why not discuss, and only discuss what you posted. Dose it really make sense to you irrelevant of morality that you would get a straight honest unbiased answer from a company representative that sole intention is to sell you a system MADE BY THE COMPANY THAT PAYS HER CHECK. When did I say it was O.K! I only stated the obvious outcome. Ask president Bush if he was truthful when he decided to attack Iraq on the pretext of it being a threat with W.M.D. to the rest of the world. You think he will state the truth. Same thing here on a deferent scale. Is it right? Off course not, but is is expected, you bet. This is why a stated that they got what they deserved. They ended up making an uninformed decision. How fault is it. That is why every time a make a major purchase, I do my own personal research. I would not expect to call Dell and having them endorse a Mac. But apparently they did, and you also think so, is this not naive? Calling someone naive or innocent is not an insult, not if it is plainly obvious.
naive |nīˈēv| (also naïve) adjective (of a person or action) showing a lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment : the rather naive young man had been totally misled. • (of a person) natural and unaffected; innocent : Andy had a sweet, naive look when he smiled.
You see the part of LACK OF EXPERIENCE on this definition. So, yes I did betray my own ignorance by using the correct word to describe your lack of experience with sales people. I guess I might have hit a nerve because you sure over-reacted. But disregard my comments, because I am stupid remember.